Paper Monitor
11:23 UK time, Thursday, 11 October 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Things have gone a bit awry at Monitor Towers. On the Newspaper Table, the normal order of things – whereby yesterday's papers are swept away and replaced with today's – has broken down, leading to an embryonic mountain of newsprint. The inundation is compounded by evidence of what can only be termed "furious rifling" – for which Paper Monitor cowardly suggests its night-shift colleagues may be responsible, safe in the knowledge they are tucked up asleep as these uncharitable thoughts are committed to keyboard.
The overall effect is dizzying – a Sunday Telegraph competes with posters of Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin (today's giveaway in the Guardian), pre-budget report "specials" vie with random pull-outs on careers and aluminium (the FT's doing, from Tuesday – "the old company dividing lines are being recycled," should you care to know).
When Paper Monitor manages to retrieve today's haul, its sense of bewilderment is mirrored by the lack of consensus on the front pages. While the Sun concerns itself with Sven's alleged latest exploits off the pitch, and the Metro splashes with Zimbabwe, the Mail, Express and Guardian plump for the superbug tale.
Only the Express lends a celebrity angle to the story – carrying an interview with ex-Bucks Fizzer Cheryl Baker.
The Times also runs with a health story – but a positive one: the benefits of statins. No sign of the once ubiquitous side-bar king, Dr Thomas Stuttaford, who used to opine about health matters serious and trivial, with alarming eagerness.
Meanwhile, confusion reigns when it comes to the McCartney divorce settlement. The Express: "Will Macca make a £50m payout today?" Not if you believe the Mirror: "Macca £60m divorce D-Day". While the Times' legal correspondent tells us: "The former Beatle, who is 65, faces a total payout approaching £70 million…"
Clearly, the Beatles puns which had for so long sustained the tabloids through the McCartney divorce story have dried up. Weathering its current surfeit of newsprint, Paper Monitor however, is put in mind of an eminently forgettable lyric from the Fabs' arch rivals of the day, the Rolling Stones, as they sought to equate redundant newspapers with an unwelcome girlfriend. "Who wants yesterday's papers? Who wants yesterday's girl?" Just don't tell the Guardian's Women's pages.
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